Elyden

Elyden

Elyden is a dying world that exists in the waning shadow of gods that long-since abandoned her. Her domains are slowly crumbling, succumbing to pollution and decay. In places the natural order seems to be unravelling, as the nightmares of maddened gods further unravel the world. Seemingly ensnared by her own decadence and decay, Elyden has become a world far removed from the grandiose beauty she once evoked. Seas slowly retreat, killing ports and harbours. Deserts expand, taking with them what life has managed to cling this far along Elyden’s descent into what can only be described as madness. With this unravelling of the natural world comes the waxing of the two elemental forces known as the Firmament and the Atramenta – the two halves of creation.
Her wardens, the 22 god-like Demiurges are forgotten. Once fortified by their subjects, the 22 mortal tribes, the Demiurges have dwindled from memory and are weak and hidden. Many of the mortal tribes have disappeared in the wake of their guardians’ languor. Without followers, the Demiurges have fallen dormant, and now slumber, their dreams transformed into tangible nightmares that are felt across the world as their once-followers continue in their path to oblivion, where their self-indulgences and other material pursuits blind them to the horror that befalls them. Elyden is now a place corrupted these nightmares, where demesnes and realms unravel like rotten dreamscapes; their corpses lying heavily on the material realm, blights upon sanity and normalcy.
Those of the Demiurges who remain alive do so at the whim of their followers. Bitter at their own fall, shackled by their mortal followers, they survive in a greatly diminished form to their once-divine-selves, decrepit and rotting. Those Demiurges granted the luxury of sentience and strength-enough to manipulate the world, withhold what knowledge they possess that has not become corrupted by insanity, leaving the mortal races to their own devices. Bitter in the knowledge that the mortal races were granted luxuries that they themselves squandered, most have come to detest the mortals, grudgingly seeking them out due to the restorative effects of their deference. Some Demiurges secretly reward those noble and hard-working mortals with minor secrets of their knowledge, though such secrets are rarely disseminated readily as they once were in Elyden’s infancy.
Above them all, unchallenged throughout the latter millennia of the Fifth-Age has reigned a single Demiurge, sundering his siblings beneath his reign; Rachanael the Hungry, Seventh of the Demiurges, and so-called Undying Machine. Under his dark reign was Elyden allowed to rot, the cities of the Korachani empire spreading like a disease around the Inner Sea, raping the land, leaving it in ruins, hastening Elyden’s decay. Farther abroad, distant empires and nations cling to a semblance of culture, though they too are in decline.
And amid this corruption do the remnants of the 22 mortal races struggle to survive. Some seek solace in ignorance, wanting only to survive their short stay in the world. Others however seek answers to questions unasked, searching cyclopean ruins of distant ages revealed by the rot of the world, hoping to find in their catacombs and foundations hints as to where they came from, what their purpose is. Perhaps in such ruins might they find the answer to their survival…
This is the world of Elyden, a tomb in the making, its entropic end within sight yet still, out of reach.

Elyden is the third of seven known Ætheric bodies, sometimes known as planets, to have been discovered by observers (astronomers, astrologers, orrerists, Atramentists, et al) within the system known as Sorchar; the others being, in successive order moving outwards from our star Sor: Hael, Algol, (Elyden), Liviad, Gnihlas, Cykranosh, and Nihav. Others have been postulated by observers mortal and otherwise, though the evidence given by Otherworlders and those with abilities beyond the ken of ‘mere mortals’ suggest that the Sorchar system is complete with one star and seven planets. Many of those stars are themselves orbited by one or more satellites, with Liviad and Gnihlas each known to possess seven and three, respectively. Elyden herself is orbited by two satellites – Arakhamé the Red and Siella the White (Details on the two satellites may be found elsewhere in this section).

Elyden orbits Sor at a mean speed of ~65,000-miles per hour in a counteclockwise direction when observed from above the northern pole of Kholamor. She orbits Sor at a mean distance of 92,000,000 miles, with a periapsis of ~90,500,000-miles and an apoapsis of ~93,500,000-miles. She has an equatorial radius of ~6,028-miles, with an equatorial circumference of ~37,880-miles and a polar circumference of ~37,815-miles and an estimated total surface area of 455,957,666-miles.
Elyden is a rocky planet, with a metallic core, rocky shell and earthen crust in the depressions of which collect oceans of water; giving the term terraqueous globe (Elyden is thought to be the only terraqueous globe in Sorchar, with the other planets thought to be either terraous or gaseous in nature). Above this is an atmosphere that retains gasses due to the sphere’s gravity. It is this atmosphere that largely protects us from Ætheric cauterity, severe effects of the elementae vitale originating without Elyden and also regulates temperature extremes between night and day.
Of the seven Sorchari planets, Elyden is thought to be the only one with an atmosphere and liquid water, both believed to be vital components in the propagation of mortal life, though it has not been entirely discounted that other forms of life might exist on extraterraqueous globes or even in the Penumbra of the Firmament themselves (indeed, the number of creatures whose existence relies on one of the two elementae vitale, as they are called, would lend credence to the belief in extraterraqueous life, though little solid evidence exists to support it yet). Some claim the very existence of isawhani (Otherworlders) is direct proof of the ability of either the Firmament or the Penumbra of spawning and sustaining ‘life’, though given their detached and, for want of another term, alien personalities, first-hand evidence has been difficult to glean.
Despite this mystery, Elyden has had no shortage of what naturalists classify as life (described as Vitalism – the fundamental difference between organic and inorganic matter, and the belief inherent that life can only be derived from organic matter), even in these dark days that bear witness to her death throes.
If one disregards the corruption of the natural world and goes back, even as little as one millennia, one can find a plethora of examples of life in almost all conditions imaginable – the is little-to-no terrain or climate catalogued by our brave explorers that have been unequivocally bereft of life. In some form, minute as it may be, some manner of life exists. Be it microscopic organisms that subsist on the oxidisation of metal, or the gigantic behemoths that lurk in the abysms of our oceans, life has, since the appearance and hubris of the Demiurges, proliferated, and there is little reason to doubt that it will disappear any-time soon.

The Globe of ElydenAge: ≈ 1,000,000,000 yearsEpoch: Sixth Age of Mortal life